How The Web Works

The current incompatibilities of the platforms and tools make it impossible to access existing information through a common interface, leading to waste of time, frustration and obsolete answers to simple data lookup. There is a potential large benefit from the integration of a variety of systems in a way which allows a user to follow links pointing from one piece of information to another one.

Tim Berners-Lee, Robert Cailliau; WorldWideWeb: Proposal for a HyperText Project; 1990.

The architecture of the web today is largely founded on Tim Berners-Lee’s original design. Thanks greatly to Berners-Lee’s follow-on efforts with the W3C, the web still provides the open, functional, and powerful capabilities that he originally envisioned. The following subsections describe the key elements of the design of the web: